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YCS is a watchdog for development and researches smart solutions for our territory.

Edible Garden Project

In summer 2018, with funding from the City of Whitehorse Environment Grant, we started our own edible garden project at YCS.

We grow food to help people get hands-on experience with gardening, give back to the community, and help the planet too. You’re welcome to sit in the garden and enjoy the green space anytime. If you’d like to help out with the garden, please contact us! 50% of the produce goes to volunteers and 50% is donated.

How Does Our Garden Grow?

Our garden aims to provide for local needs in a sustainable way, following the principles of permaculture. Permaculture design mimics the patterns and processes found in nature to achieve the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. Our boxes are filled with a 70% compost, 30% sand mix from the City of Whitehorse. We use no chemical inputs in our garden. We mostly grow from seed, sowing directly into the boxes. We capture rainwater from the roof, using city water as backup. For the hoops which support some of the plants and the garden coverings, we use local hand-harvested willow.

We grow many types of food, experimenting each year to see what works best. We’ve grown:

In the Yukon, a lot of our food is trucked up from the south. Trucks use a lot of fuel, which contributes greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. In fact, transport is one of the Yukon’s major sources of greenhouse gases. The sun’s heat gets trapped by these gases and warms the planet. Currently, humans are burning too much fuel and the planet is getting too hot, too fast.

The north is warming faster than anywhere else and Yukoners are already feeling the effects of winter temperature swings, warming permafrost, and more summer wildfires. Growing more of our own food will help us cut emissions from transport and reduce our reliance on imported food. We also make a special effort to grow plants that support pollinator species like bees, providing food for local insects as well as people!

Do It Yourself

For guides to building your own planters and growing veggies, please see the downloadable documents below. [COMING SOON]

Thank You

Thank you to everyone who has helped our garden grow. The City of Whitehorse Environment Grant provided the funding we needed to get the project started in 2018. Without our team of volunteers planning, building, planting, tending and harvesting, we wouldn’t have a garden! Thank you also to everyone who has donated plants or materials to the garden. We always welcome volunteers and donations – just ask how you can help!